Locked in Space
by OfTinMenAndPaperHearts
Summary: The team wake up to find themselves trapped in space. After hearing that the Kree may be on the ship, Daisy isn't allowed to leave her room in case they realize their experiments were a success. Most days she only has Fitzsimmons to keep her company. That is, until Robbie shows up. Unfortunately, he's just as stuck as the rest of them. QuakeRider, Fitzsimmons, general team bonding.
1. What the Freakin' Frak?

**My first fanfiction!**

 **I figured I should post it before season 5 starts so that I wouldn't get distracted and/or chicken out. So here it is: a whopping 40 minutes before the season premiere.**

 **Takes place post-season 4. I tried to work in the things we learned about the season in the promos and from the producers about season 5, as well as some of the speculation about what it all means (Fitzsimmons have their relationship on the back burner, the Brood may make an indirect appearance, and Hunter might have a small cameo, etc.).**

 **Since Robbie wasn't sent to the ship with the rest of them, it may take a few chapters for him to get there.**

 **Stick around. Chapters should improve quickly as I get the hang of this whole writing thing again.**

 **~1900 words.**

* * *

 **Chapter 1: What the Freakin' FRAK?!**

Fitz woke to a worried Mack looming over him. "There you are, Turbo. Up and at 'em." Fitz tried to sit up. _Why was he on the floor?_

"Jemma," he croaked, still groggy.

She came into his view, and relief washed over him. She was okay. He faltered in his attempt to sit, and she motioned to Mack. "Let's get him to a bed before he falls over." She looked him in the eyes. "Stay put until your head's a bit clearer; it may take a minute." _Odd._ Jemma was being careful about what emotions she let show on her face.

When she left his field of vision, Fitz realized he didn't recognize the room they were in. The ceiling, walls, and floor, along with the two doors into the room, all seemed to be made of metal. There wasn't much furniture, just a small table, two chairs, two dressers, two beds, and a sink in the corner. It was a bit like what he imagined a dormitory at university would look like if the school were on a ship.

And the whole team was there. _Why were they there?_

Shock helped his brain wake up. "We were in a diner," he sat up in alarm. Yo-Yo reached out to steady him when he swayed, slightly queasy, as the memories came back to him.

"Yes. And then we woke up here." Yo-Yo stated in her accented English, as straight to the point as always. He looked towards Simmons, remembering the conversation they'd had right before entering the diner. She and Mack were moving an unconscious Daisy onto the other bed, May and Coulson hovering nearby. Yo-Yo saw him looking in their direction and explained, "We think we were given something to make us sleep, and it's taking longer to stop working on some of you."

Once Daisy had been placed in the other bed, Coulson gathered the conscious team members, including a now only slightly unsteady Fitz, around the small table. "Okay, first things first: we need to figure out where we are and why we're here. Mack should stay here to protect Daisy, Fitz, and Simmons. Neither of you," he looked back and forth between them, "have done much clearing of hostile areas. Besides," he added before they could interrupt, "none of us have any weapons so it'll be hand-to-hand combat if we run into any hostile forces," immediately quelling any protest from either of them.

As the rest of the team worked out the logistics, Simmons drifted back toward Daisy, worry written on her face. Fitz drifted with her, watching as she felt Daisy's wrist for a pulse once again. He couldn't seem to think of what to say to her, their conversation outside the diner fresh in his mind.

They both jumped and turned to look as May jerked open one of the two doors for Yo-Yo to run through. Apparently, they were starting their recon mission. Yo-Yo showed up again immediately, saying "Clear. It's just a bathroom with another door." Coulson, May, and Yo-Yo went into the adjacent room while Mack leaned tiredly against the wall opposite the three younger agents in his charge.

Fitz looked back to see Simmons eyeing him warily, clearly surprised he had been so close. He opened his mouth to speak (hoping the words would come to him before the speaking actually started), when the second door burst open with a _CRACK,_ forcing a strangled yell of surprise from his lips instead. Mack threw himself between the intruder at the door and his charges, only to find that there was no intruder.

"Ooh, sorry!" Yo-Yo's voice came from the other room. She peered around the door she'd left through, Coulson and May behind, her expression deeply apologetic. "I didn't think that would be so loud." Mack sighed in relief.

Fitz loosed the breath he'd been holding and realized he and Simmons were clutching each others' hands. They let go simultaneously. Yo-Yo looked at the group. "This area is made of two bedrooms connected by a baño. Both bedrooms exit to a hallway with three doors on the sides and one at the end, with security cameras."

Coulson looked around the room. "Then someone may be watching. Did you see any in here or the other rooms?" Yo-Yo shook her head. "Good." He looked at Elena, "I know you've gotten faster since Columbia, but just in case the security cameras are fast enough to catch you, we should clear the rest of the hallway the old-fashioned way. If someone is watching, they may have missed that short sprint in the hallway. And the door could just as easily have been opened from the inside. There's no need to let them know we have Inhumans with us. Especially if the Watchdogs are behind this."

Yo-Yo didn't look pleased, but she nodded, and the three of them crept back out into the hallway, leaving Mack, Fitz, Simmons, and a still-unconscious Daisy behind.

* * *

It couldn't have been more than a few minutes since the others had left, but Jemma was already feeling the silence between her and Fitz like an oppressive force pushing down on them both. She was starting to think Mack could feel it too, as he had taken to studying his fingernails rather intently as he sat guarding the hallway door. Fitz clearly _wanted_ to say something but couldn't quite get it out.

 _Enough of this._

"I—" they started in unison.

"You go—" also in unison.

They both waited for the other to start.

"This is ridiculous!" Jemma snapped. "Just because we've decided to have the romantic aspect of our relationship go dormant for now, that doesn't mean we can't still act like _ourselves!"_

"Exactly!" Fitz let out a huge sigh of relief. "Being on standby shouldn't keep us from being friends. We've been friends half our _lives_ ; people used to call us by one name; it's not like we can just flip a switch," Fitz insisted with conviction, reducing the tension between them from an eight to around 1.5 (they were, after all, still semi-broken-up).

Relieved, Jemma was finally able to indulge her curiosity about their surroundings. "Shall we look for clues for our location?" she asked, a conspiratorial look in her eye.

"Absolutely." Fitz turned to Mack. "We're gonna go explore the other rooms they cleared." Mack made a move to get up. "Don't worry. We aren't going into the corridor. And if it really is just like this room, we'll come back soon enough. Just stay with Daisy; she shouldn't wake up here alone."

Mack nodded, settling back into his post by the door. "Try not to mess with anything dangerous, Turbo."

Straight-faced, Fitz responded, "Well, how would we know it's dangerous before we mess with it?"

Jemma tried to hide her surprise at seeing him joking with Mack. After all that had happened, she knew how guilty he felt about not just the things that had happened in the Framework, but for building it as well; but Mack just looked at him sardonically until Fitz ushered Jemma into the next room.

She was glad he at least had Mack to keep him from falling down the rabbit-hole of misery he'd been approaching, but a bit hurt that she couldn't be the one who kept him from the edge. Still, she'd seen how good Mack was with Fitz when she'd first come back from her time in Hydra. He had a way with Fitz that even she - with their semi-telepathic connection - couldn't replicate.

Jemma walked through the side door to find a simple bathroom. All it had was a toilet and shower, and another door on the opposite side. They opened it and found a mirror image of the first bedroom.

"Definitely like a dorm room on a ship," murmured Fitz.

"Exactly like a dorm room on a ship." She smiled, "This is almost exactly what the suites in the second-year dormitory looked like at the Academy!" Jemma looked around in wonder. "Well, without the desks. And made of metal, of course." She started opening the doors of the dresser to see if there was anything inside. "I wonder why that is…" Striking out, she moved to the next drawer while Fitz checked to see if there was anything under the beds. "I don't feel any movement, no rocking from waves, so I don't think it's a ship. I suppose it could be a plane... Though if we _are_ in the air, we'd have to be in perfect weather to not feel anything. And it's so quiet! The Zephyr is state of the art and there's still always that little hum."

"It could be a plane on the ground. Still," Fitz looked up at her, "the Zephyr's better than the old Bus. Remember how loud that hum was at night?"

"Of course I do; that noise nearly drove me out of my mind." She closed the drawers. "I'm striking out. You?"

"Nothing. The only notable things about this whole place are the things on the ceiling and that everything but the furniture is metal."

Jemma looked up, surprised she hadn't thought to do so before. There were indeed odd half-spheres attached to the ceiling, "What on Earth are they?"

"Don't know, but they're in the other room too, so there's no reason to stay over here to find out."

They walked back into the first room and, with Daisy still sleeping, chose to use the furniture on the far side of the room, farther from Daisy, to try to get a closer look. Fitz climbed on top of the dresser while Simmons stayed on the ground to spot him.

"It's definitely mechanical," Fitz said from above as he studied the metallic half-spheres. "Visually, it's sort of like a whiffle ball if the circles were craters instead of holes, but I can see a small, circular seam in the metal in the center of each dip that looks like it may be a hatch for something. Not sure what, but," he stood on his tiptoes and reached toward it, poking it with his finger. "I think it opens toward us. I'm not sure we can get it open from here." He moved to sit on the top of the dresser.

Fitz lowered himself to the floor. "Maybe there's a switch." They both started looking for one on the wall.

"Found it!" Fitz called loudly. Jemma and Mack both jumped, startled, as a nails-on-chalkboard sound came screeching from the back wall of the room where Fitz was standing, just as shocked as they were by the continuing noise coming from the wall.

Mack and Simmons started moving toward him as the central metal panel of the wall began moving upward.

Jemma noticed movement in Daisy's bed and ran to her side as she stirred, woken by the noise. Jemma gently opened each of her closest friend's eyelids to check the size of her pupils. Ignoring Mack's uttered "Oh, Hell no," in favor of checking Daisy's vitals and helping her sit up. She only stopped when the noise ceased, and she saw Daisy's eyes go from blearily blinking at her to wide open and on alert, staring in the direction of the others.

Jemma slowly turned to look, dragging her gaze towards what she suddenly knew would be an earth-shattering sight, though she couldn't have guessed how much. As her eyes began to focus on the view out of the newly-opened window, she didn't flinch at the sound of Daisy's voice. She barely heard the woman at her side shout "What the freakin' FRAK?!" over the rushing in her ears.

 _They were in Space._

'What the freakin' frak' was right.

* * *

 _ ** **UPDATE: Editing this mid-season 5, and the earth-shattering line in the last few paragraphs made me laugh out loud. I know it might mislead people a bit (they are nowhere near close enough to see the Earth, and even if they were, the earth here has not been shattered) but I wrote it** like an hour before **the premiere, and I'm keeping it. It's just too perfect.****_

 **This was a lot more Fitzsimmons than I'd planned on (I mostly wanted to do a QuakeRider story) but it's probably going to continue as like 50/50 between Fitzsimmons and Quakerider.**

 **Also, if I continue with the story, there will probably be a QuakeRider M-rated chapter, but I'll post it separately as a one-shot so the T-rating doesn't change.**

 **Not sure if/for how long I'll continue this story since writing it (well, mostly planning it) was just my way to get through the time between re-watching season 4 on Netflix and season 5 airing. Plus, I realized after writing this chapter that the plot-bunny that's been pestering me for a month (QuakeRider and Fitzsimmons confined to a few rooms together, with emotional-wound healing and roommate hijinks) is going to be a whole lot of dialogue. I've also realized that I really hate writing dialogue. Punctuating and tagging it are the worst. (It seems so self-explanatory when you read it, but writing it is a fricking nightmare.)**

 **So, please comment if you want it to continue.**

 **Also, I'm a college student, so updates might be a bit sporadic depending on school.**

 **I'm all about constructive criticism, but this is my first ever fanfiction and the first time I've written an actual _story_ (not just essays and such) since probably middle school so please be nice.**


	2. Welcome to Your New Home

**Three episodes into season 5!**

 **Fitz staying behind had better mean Robbie is gonna be in this season. I remember someone from the show saying how he probably couldn't be in the first half of the season because the team was going to be in space,**

 _ **But if it's not the**_ **whole** _ **team…**_

 **Anyway, Chapter 2! I figured I'd procrastinate the hell out of it, but instead I'm using this to procrastinate the hell out of my other stuff!**

 **~2000 words**

* * *

 **Chapter 2: Welcome to Your New Home**

In the awed silence that followed Daisy's outburst, Fitz was the first to speak. _"_ Artificial gravity! _How_ do we have artificial _gravity?!_ "

Even after everything they'd been through, it still amazed Mack that _that_ could be his friend's immediate reaction. Mack's was much less specific. "Where the hell _are_ we?"

"Do you think it's an alien spaceship? …Wow. Just asked that for real." Daisy had ' _of course this my life'_ written all over her face.

The three of them started all talking at once, asking questions posed to no one until Simmons' soft voice was heard through the din, the misery in it shutting them up completely.

"Oh my god, I'm back."

She looked sick. Mack couldn't even imagine how terrible this must be for her. Having found herself trapped and looking at a foreign sky once before, she had barely escaped with her life. To find herself in that position _again_ …

Daisy squeezed her hand, trying to reassure her. Mack had no idea what to say. There was probably nothing he _could_ say to make this any less gut-wrenchingly awful for her.

Simmons resiliently pulled herself together. She cleared her throat and said, matter-of-factly, "I don't recognize any of the constellations. We're nowhere near home, and we're not near Maveth either."

"We will find a way back," Fitz said in a soft voice, though his tone was irrefutable.

Simmons gave a cursory nod, not looking convinced. She drew in a breath and answered Daisy's earlier question. _"_ It can't be an alien ship, at least not entirely. The design of everything is too similar to ours: the hinges, the toilets, the doorknobs. Everything appears and functions much the same way as it does at home, even if a lot of it is made of metal. Even the _height_ of the doorknobs is the same."

"So, we're in a _human_ spaceship?"Mack couldn't keep himself from chiming in at that. A human spaceship far enough away to not have recognizable constellations…

"Maybe. We have no idea what Fury got up to while he was Director," Fitz pointed out.

 _That guy…_ Nothing good ever came from him and his secrets.

Simmons spoke up. "I suppose there could be a sort of convergent evolution of design if the people were _incredibly_ physically similar, but even if that is the case, these are not the most primitive designs. We're not talking about simple tools, but _mechanisms_ with more complex functions _._ Designs developed on another planet, one with a different gravity, terrain, atmosphere, materials, and, especially, life forms… Well, it's basically impossible for almost _everything_ in here to look and function the same as on Earth: this ship has to be human-made, or at least made for human inhabitants," her voice faltered a little, "by aliens who knew the precise function and appearance of these things on Earth."

There was a pause as they all pondered the implications of that.

"Perhaps some combination of the two, since the objects are all recognizable, but the tech is so much more advanced. Humans are still so far away from being capable of artificial gravity; the sheer amount of energy it would take to generate it…" Fitz trailed off, no doubt doing the calculations in his head.

Fitz started going down one of his engineering rabbit holes. "But how is it even being done? Using rotational force would have loads of issues, and it doesn't feel like the gravity is fluctuating." He peered out the window, "It's too bad there isn't anything near enough to see how fast we're going, but even if it is linear acceleration, that would use up so much fuel so fast. Magnetism would require a massive amount of voltage per second so it would never be sustainable…"

Mack loved the guy from the bottom of his heart, but how on… well, not-Earth, he could get so hung up on the possible _mechanics_ of the crazy situation they were in, instead of on the craziness of the situation itself, Mack would never understand. And as an engineer himself, that was saying something.

Simmons interrupted Fitz's musings, sounding surprisingly excited. "Or science fiction was right all along, and there _is_ some sort of hypothetical gravity generating device! Or-" She and Fitz looked at each other. "Do you think-"

"But how could they stabilize-"

"Guys," Daisy called, snapping them out of it. "For the rest of us?"

"Gravitonium," the two scientists answered at the same time.

"What the hell is gravitonium?" Mack was not liking the surprises he'd had today.

"Wait - You mean that stuff from Malta?" Daisy asked the pair. "The stuff your nutty professor tried to sink, along with a whole lot of people, just to keep it away from Quinn?"

"Yeah."

That _definitely_ didn't sound good.

"I haven't thought about that stuff in years..." Daisy seemed taken aback by the memory. "That was the first time I ever pulled a gun on someone..." Mack looked at her in concern. Having heard the stories of her civilian life before S.H.I.E.L.D, it must have been a traumatic experience. Then she muttered darkly, "should've pulled the trigger."

His eyebrows shot up. He wasn't sure how to react to that, but it turned out he didn't need to. Simmons put her arm around Daisy, drawing her close.

"In any case," she said lightly, "at least we won't suffer from loss of bone density. Though I _do_ wonder how oxygen levels are maintained…" Fitz looked thoughtful; then perturbed. The enormity of their situation was beginning to sink in for each of them.

"Does it _matter?!_ We're in outer-frigging-Space!" There was an edge of panic in Daisy's voice, and Mack put a reassuring hand on her arm. "I was a _hacker_ four years ago! How is this -"

" _THAT COULD'VE BEEN AN AIRLOCK!"_ Fitz suddenly erupted, startling Mack with the alarm his voice. Even Daisy tried to mollify Fitz after this outburst, pulled out her incredulity by the pain in his voice. _"_ That could've— _I_ could've killed us all," he uttered in barely more than a whisper.

Mack knew his friend had been taking recent events hard. The uncomfortably-overheard news that he had put his relationship with Simmons on hold hadn't come as too big a shock to him: Mack knew what it was like to wake up from the Framework with a whole other life in his head. But while he knew how _incredibly_ _real_ the world and people of the Framework had been, he could only imagine what it was like for that other life to include a complete reversal of personality and morals.

While they were still standing in shock, Daisy beat Mack and Simmons to putting an arm around Fitz. A reassuring Simmons joined them, and Fitz crumpled into their embrace. Her composure restored by necessity, Daisy turned to Mack. "You need to find the others and make sure they know the dangers of… well, I don't really know all the things that could go wrong in a spaceship, but I'm sure there are a _ton_."

Mack nodded, knowing the three youngest members of the team could use some time to comfort each other without an audience. And now that Daisy was awake, she was more than capable of protecting the two scientists. He moved toward the door. "Look after them, Tremors." She nodded.

He made it a few steps down the hall, clocking the security cameras on the ceiling before a thought occurred to him. He darted back into the room, "If you have to fight, definitely try to avoid using your powers. There may be really complicated life support systems throughout this thing."

Daisy's eyes went wide for a second as she thought of the amount of tech that must be in every inch of the ship, all of it susceptible to quakeage. "Noted," she said, her voice a bit strained. "Now go make sure no one presses any big, red buttons." He nodded and headed back out again.

* * *

Mack crept down the hallway, trying to be as stealthy as someone his size could be. Which admittedly wasn't much.

And the mess in his head wasn't helping. He'd managed to keep it in pretty well given the circumstances when he was with his younger teammates, but now that he wasn't trying to be a calming influence to his pseudo younger siblings, it was hitting him pretty hard.

This was so much farther from Naperville, Illinois than he had _ever_ thought he'd be.

And yet here he was, creeping down a hallway without a weapon so he could tell his teammates that they were in God damn outer space.

He should have been a regular mechanic.

Though to be fair, the last "regular" mechanic he'd met had had a pretty rough time of it. And a _really_ messed up night job.

Mack heard muffled sounds from the end of the hallway. Getting closer, he was able to make out Coulson's voice. "So they just… visit?" Coulson asked before he was answered by another voice Mack didn't recognize. Mack reached for a weapon he didn't have.

"Yep, they just scan some things, maybe a person or two, bring a _big_ crate of stuff into a room no one else can get into, stay in there for a bit, and leave. They never say a word."

Mack warily entered the room at the end of the hallway, on edge and prepared to fight if need be, only to find Yo-Yo and the team in a large, circular kitchen/lounge with a few hallways branching off it, a huge window showing the view, and three people he didn't know suddenly staring at him.

"Friendlies?" he asked his team.

"So far," said May.

"…So, you know about the space thing, then."

"Yep," she answered curtly. "Not a fan."

 _Sounds about right._

"Well, New Guy," the man sitting on the only couch smiled genially. "Welcome to your new home. We," he nodded to the two people Mack didn't know, a man and a woman, "have yet to find a way back to the old one, and we've been here… probably four months?" He said it like a question whose answer he wasn't quite sure about. "So you might as well get comfortable.

"In that vein," he continued, turning to Coulson and May, "how many of you are there?"

"Why?" Coulson asked, cautiously.

"Well, only one full sector of rooms is still vacant." The unknown woman sat on the couch next to Guy #1 (if the guy didn't mention names in his introduction, that was his own fault). "The hallway you came from, that's where you showed up?" Seeing their nods, the woman continued, "You've probably seen at least some of it, then.

"There are five bedrooms in each sector. Each bedroom is connected to a bathroom, so at least there's that, but there are only seven beds and kind of a weird distribution so there can be some weird, political, interpersonal crap in choosing room assignments," the woman explained, as both the guys in her group nodded grimly. She went on, "One large bedroom with a double bed and a bathroom. One suite with two rooms, each with a single bed, connected by a bathroom. And one suite with two bedrooms, each with two beds."

"If you have more than eight people," Guy #2 started, "there are a few rooms left over in other sectors. If there's more than one couple, though, all the double-bed rooms are taken. The mattresses from the single beds can be put together but the frames are impossible to move, so you have to put them on the floor," he said grimly, clearly annoyed about this fact. The woman rolled her eyes.

Coulson answered before anyone else had a chance. "We have two more people on board. With six people, we'll probably need to take up the whole sector to fit comfortably. Though we can renegotiate room assignments if more people show up, of course," Coulson said, smoothly. The strangers nodded. "We should probably head back to figure out room assignments, so I guess we'll see you around soon?"

The three nodded again and started talking amongst themselves. As the team was walking away, Mack heard Guy # 2 say, "What, am I the only one who thinks there might be alien mice-things on this ship? I don't wanna get nibbled on in my sleep," followed by an exasperated sigh from his friends.

Once they were far enough down the hallway to not be overheard, Mack turned to Coulson. "Only _two_ more people?"

Coulson nodded. "We shouldn't let them find out about Daisy."

* * *

 **One of the main reasons this story stuck in my head was because I thought the shock of being in outer space along with not having an enemy to hate/fight, might make Daisy a bit more like she was in season one. In all her no-filter-whatsoever, odd-one-out glory. There was this unflappable calm that came with learning the hate-fu that has made her reactions much less fun. So hopefully a bit of her old way of talking will come back once I figure out how to mesh together her new maturity with her early lack of chill/walls/filter.**

 **I've been toying with the idea of Hunter, Bobbi and Vijay Nadeer having a small cameo appearance on Earth as Robbie tries to find out what happened to the team. Let me know what you think!**


	3. Don't Let the Empire Strike Back

**Happy New Year! Sorry this took so long! Between finals and the holidays, I've been swamped.**

 **I did procrastinate long enough to cut together a quick picture for the story! It was supposed to be Daisy and Robbie super close but acting like they don't care while Fitzsimmons laughed at their too-cool-for-school antics, but there wasn't enough space and Fitzsimmons are just laughing at the wall. But you get the gist.**

 **1/3/18**

 **~2000 words**

 **I own nothing.**

* * *

 **Chapter 3: Don't Let the Empire Strike Back**

As soon as they got through the door, all three kids started talking over each other asking questions—well, Coulson assumed, anyway. It was pretty hard to tell, what with three people talking a mile a minute all at once. He waited, knowing they'd eventually realize that no one knew what they were saying.

They finally paused. Fitz and Sk- Daisy— _why was he still doing that?—_ looked to Simmons, who promptly asked, "Did you find out how we got here?"

"No," May brusquely answered for the group.

"Are their other people here?" Daisy asked.

"Yes," May responded, as amusingly gruff as always. They didn't have to wait long for the reaction.

All three responded in unison. " _Human _people?"

Coulson held back a grin as he took the lead for the _non_ -monosyllabic answer. "Yes, human." They seemed to relax a little. "Evidently there are thirteen other people on this ship; all of them human." He paused. "There _is_ a closed off section of the ship which some think has something living in it, but let's put that off until tomorrow."

Fitz's eyes bugged out, but Coulson just continued, "Apart from the humans, and whatever may or may not be in that sector," he paused wondering how to phrase this, "it seems that this ship has occasional … _visitors_ , which based on their description sound like the Kree." The kids (and Mack) were taken aback.

"No one seems to know why the Kree come here—some think they do maintenance, or that the crate they bring is why food never runs out—but the one thing we know for sure is that when they come here, they scan people."

The others looked at Daisy and Elena in alarm. He carried on before the questions could start. "Which brings me to the next part," he said grimly, knowing how Daisy would hate the conclusion he'd come to. "We don't know why they scan people. Maybe they're looking for Inhumans, or to start a new experiment, or maybe they're just checking our blood oxygen levels—but whatever the Kree's intentions may be," he paused, "we need to keep Daisy and Yo-Yo away from them.

"Since Miss Rodriguez has already been seen by the cameras and crew, the only way to stay away from them without drawing unwanted attention is to keep to quarters when the Kree come."

He looked regretfully to his newest recruit, "It seems they only scan three or four people each time; if you're not around, they may just scan the people who are. It does run the risk of them finding out you're here and coming to scan you, but since the other people and the cameras are already aware you're on board, disappearing entirely would just draw extra attention." Yo-Yo nodded understandingly, and he began to address the group again.

"Right now, _no one_ on board, not even whoever is behind the cameras, knows Daisy is on this ship; we should keep it that way." He looked at her, hesitant to continue. "Which, with both exits from this suite covered by cameras, means—"

"I'm stuck in this room and the one connected to it," Daisy finished. "Awesome."

He offered a sympathetic smile. "I know it's not ideal, and that you've gotten used to leading the charge these past few years, but you are probably the most famous Inhuman in the world. There's a good chance the other people here will recognize you from the news. If someone lets it slip, they won't even need to scan you to realize what you are.

"The Kree man, Vin-Tak, who showed up after you went through terrigenesis; he said that his people believe the subjects of the ancient experiments on Earth were destroyed; wiped out. Who knows what the Kree will do if they find out the subjects of the only successful experiment survived?"

Mack bristled, "What about Yo-Yo? If it's that dangerous—"

Elena cut him off. "Two people always being gone when they come is more noticeable than one. I can just say aliens freak me out or something."

Coulson felt a smile tug his lips, though it faded the more he thought about what the Kree man had said.

"Vin-Tak may have actually been a best-case scenario. Even if it meant indiscriminately killing whoever was transformed, he was still technically on the side of keeping the peace. And he was _alone_. Some Kree people might be on his side of the issue and think that the experiments were abominations, but he came to Earth because he felt that if the Kree empire found out the old experiments had survived, they would want to start them up all over again.

"Of those few aligned with Vin-Tak, there could be people traveling to Earth looking to exterminate all Inhumans, or anyone who might have the DNA, or even to just get rid of Inhumans and humans alike: stop any chance that someone with the DNA survives."

Yo-Yo muttered under her breath, "And here I thought those _perros rabiosos_ were bad."

"But from what he said, it seemed like the ruling majority would want to start it all up again, abducting humans to make more soldiers; put more innocent people through the trauma that turned what I have to assume was once some poor, scared kid into Hive."

Everyone looked horrified at that, but Daisy more than anyone. It made Coulson feel like a monster, really; to burden her into voluntarily locking herself up. He had watched Daisy's face get more and more troubled throughout his speech as she realized the harm either faction could do to her people, and it broke his heart to make her aware of the potential danger she posed to them. But if anything ever happened to the Inhumans because of her, Daisy would be the one feeling like a monster. She'd only just found her way; he couldn't let her go through that all over again. Coulson knew from Simmons how close the time away had come to killing her; even getting shot as she ran around trying to save enough of her fellow Inhumans that she might feel worth Lincoln's sacrifice.

He put a hand on her arm to comfort her. "I know it's rough, and who knows: maybe they'll visit the ship, and we'll find out they're not even Kree, just some other race of blue alien. But until we know for sure, if no one out _there_ ," he jerked his head toward the door, "knows you're here, then there's no one to mention you or the powers you're known for to the Kree if it turns out to be them." Daisy nodded somberly, still looking troubled as she glanced at Elena, no doubt worried, like he was, about the Inhuman they couldn't hide.

"On another note," Coulson continued, hoping to lighten the mood and certainly lightening his own. "Can we just take a second to appreciate that we're hiding on a spaceship from an evil, alien Empire in outer space?"

Daisy gave a startled snort of laughter, while Simmons looked elated. Mack and Yo-Yo seemed to enjoy the comment more than he'd predicted (though he supposed he should have expected it, given all their 80's sci-fi references). Fitz cracked a smile, and even the corners of May's mouth went up— _both_ of them. And they didn't just twitch; they _stayed_ up.

Feeling quite proud of himself, Coulson tried to keep the lighter mood going. "Now for more immediate concerns. Since we already ate dinner at the diner, we only have one thing we need to figure out tonight; the bane of every camp counselor's existence: room assignments. Only one room has a double bed, so shall we let the couples duke it out?"

It did not get the response Coulson was expecting. A corner of May's mouth twitched, and Daisy let out a small snicker of laughter, but Mack, Simmons, and Fitz looked awkward. Yo-Yo just looked confused. "It means fight it out," he added quickly.

"Oh," she smiled, responding with the cheerful competitiveness he'd been going for. "Well, Mack is much too tall for these little—"

"Yeah, Mack and Yo-Yo should take that room," Fitz cut Yo-Yo off, surprising everyone but the still-awkward trio.

Phil looked at him, starting to understand the reason for the awkwardness. He knew Fitz was struggling with some leftover demons from the Framework but had hoped that with them _all_ stuck, Fitz and Simmons would be able to enjoy actually being trapped together for once. But with everything that had happened the past few years, he wasn't surprised they felt the need to process it on their own.

"There's another suite," Coulson said, trying to take the spotlight off the despondent pair, "like this one with two rooms, but with one bed each. I think May and I will take that one. That way the three of you can have some bonding time, and no one has to suffer through having May or myself as a roommate."

 _There._ He'd made sure Fitz and Simmons would still have each other to lean on while leaving the (literal) door open for reconciliation, and also making it so they could tell people about the split in their own time if they weren't ready to just yet. Coulson was actually quite proud of himself.

After a short discussion of logistics, the Coulson, May, Mack, and Elena headed out to their new rooms.

* * *

 **Sorry about the lackluster ending; I ended up cutting this chapter in half. But since the second half became chapter 4, I'm hoping to get it out sometime in the next week. Most of it's written, it just needs a ton of editing (it's pretty terrible right now).**

 **I feel like she'd blow through everything I've thought of in like the first week, so I will 100% take suggestions for things Daisy can do to entertain herself. So what do you think she'd do to pass the time** **while cooped up in a room with no internet and no computer; just cell phones, whatever the team could have had in their pockets and whatever might be plausible to have on board. Private** **Message me if you don't want it to be your review**

 **Thanks SO much to Wasi104 for my first ever review! (And thanks to the other two people who wrote, and for the follows and favorites!) I was so excited to see that I had a review that I planned out the general events of chapters 3-7  
** **(Seriously guys, reviews are hella motivating.)**

 **If I stick to my plans for the next few chapters (which I really haven't yet but here's hoping), Robbie should be showing up (on Earth) around chapter 5 or 6. Unfortunately, I need enough time to have passed for the team's absence to be noticed beforehand. I'm also kind of dreading writing him. How do you write someone who uses like 90% nonverbal communication? It's not that he doesn't speak, he just says so much without it. And does he actually _hear_ the Rider's voice in his head? How do you even _write_ that?**


	4. Emotions 'n' Stuff

**Daisy's a little odd in the first scene, but c'mon, it's been like 5 hours max since they got rid of the crazy robot. It's been a long day.**

 **I can't seem to think of a name for this chapter, so I kinda phoned it in.**

 **~3600 words**

 **1/11/18**

* * *

 **Chapter Four: Emotions 'n' Stuff**

It seemed to take forever for the others to leave, but once they had, Daisy turned to her two closest friends.

Ignoring the exhaustion (and awful, throbbing pain) seeping into her bones after a day of fighting Aida, getting knifed in the arm, and then shot into space (not to mention everything that happened since), she looked suspiciously at the pair.

"What's going on with you two?"

They looked hesitant to tell her, no doubt remembering how snappy she could be when she was tired (there had been a number of unfortunate, un- _caffeinated_ run-ins back when they were living on the Bus).

"About that—"  
"After everything—"

Talking over each other even now, Fitz and Simmons both started trying to explain. They paused, having a silent conversation with their eyes. Trading one last look, they turned to Daisy, and Fitz spoke up. "We've decided to put our relationship on… hold. For now." Daisy fought the bleariness that threatened to cloud her eyes, looking at them in surprise.

"Yes, after everything that's happened: me getting trapped on another planet,"

"Me, turning into Josef Mengele in the framework…" _Yikes._ Daisy cringed at his comparison to the horrific Nazi scientist.

"We've just decided we need some time to…" Simmons searched for the right word.

"…Deal," Fitz supplied.

"—With that. Yes."

Daisy was dumbstruck for all of five seconds before transitioning to frustrated as all hell.

"Are you freaking _kidding_ me?! You're trapped _together_ for the first time in FOREVER, and you split up?!" Hearing what sounded suspiciously like despair in her voice, she realized she was way too exhausted to have this conversation; and seeing their startled expressions, she did her best to reign in her frustration. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and then opened them wide, blinking repeatedly in an effort to make her eyes less dry. Taking a breath, she asked, "It's really just a break, right? Not a breakup?"

They nodded, though she couldn't be sure if it was because they were certain of the answer or just freaked out by how fervently invested she was in their relationship. Maybe a bit of both.

"Good," she said, kicking off her shoes. She looked back and forth between the pair before finally just groaning in frustration and flopping face down onto her new bed. Too drained from the day to continue, she said through the pillow, " 'cause you two are frigging made for each other." Then, more to herself than to them, she mumbled, "Completing your sentences now." If her eyes had still been open, she would've rolled them in frustration.

Simmons followed Fitz into the other room, and Daisy dozed off, only waking when she heard Simmons come back in the room. Daisy started to sit up.

"You okay?"

Simmons jumped, unaware she'd woken. She paused thoughtfully. "Yes, I think. With the idea of taking a break, at least," Jemma walked toward her and sat down on the edge of the bed. "I'm more worried about Fitz than anything else."

She cloaked her emotions behind the explanatory tone she used so often.

"Because of how well Fitz and I know each other, I've always felt like I've known how to help him; even when what helps him is me being gone." Her voice lost some of its usual tone. "But everything is so _different_ now." She scooted backward so she could lean back against the cool metal of the wall and Daisy moved to sit beside her, leaning her arm against Jemma's in silent support.

When Simmons spoke again, her voice had lost its self-assured, explanatory tone entirely. "He has a whole other _life_ in his head that know so little about, and _he_ doesn't want to talk about it," she sighed, frustrated, and leaned her head back against the wall. "I just don't know _how_ to help him with this. Everything I know about helping Fitz is rooted in my knowledge of _him_ , but right now, what he's dealing with is…"

"…The person he was when he was someone else," Daisy finished for her.

"Yeah," Jemma said miserably, as she drew her knees to her chest. Daisy snuck an arm around her friend's shoulders. "Half the things I say seem to just make it worse."

"Hey…" said Daisy in a soothing voice. "After everything he did in there… He's gotta have a lot going on in his head right now. It'll take some time for him to figure out who he is again. For now, he probably thinks that keeping you away from the stuff going through his head is protecting you somehow.

"I can't imagine what it's like to have the connection you two share. But I think if I did,.." Daisy trailed off, wondering how to phrase it best. Her brow furrowed and she sighed, continuing matter-of-factly, "I've been where Fitz is right now. I've done terrible things to good people, and I've woken up from it to realize… the _damage_ I'd done; the monster I'd become.

"And I left so you guys wouldn't…" she heard an odd chuckle escape her throat, " 'drown in my wake' pretty soon afterward. I felt… toxic. And I didn't want for you—" Daisy cut herself off. "Anyway, if I'd had a weirdly semi-telepathic connection with someone the way you two do, I'd have stayed as far away as possible; keep you from ever having to understand what was in my head."

Jemma's expression had gone from distress to worry for Daisy as she spoke, but now she turned to her friend, a thoughtful look on her face. " _You_ can help him."

Daisy shifted, uneasy with the idea of taking on Jemma's supportive role when she was clearly so put out about not being able to support him herself.

But Simmons seemed to perk up some at the idea. Noticing Daisy's discomfort, she said, rolling her eyes, "It's _fine,_ Daisy. I've only been broken up about not being able to help him because I couldn't figure out _how._ I told you before, I've always known how to help him even when what helps is me _not_ being there: it doesn't need to be me who helps him as long as he's being helped." Daisy's discomfort disappeared.

Simmons had almost completely recovered her usual demeanor, and she continued matter-of-factly, "I _wish_ he could just talk to me, of course, like he usually does, but I just have no frame of reference for what it's like to have _who I am_ altered or to face the fallout from that. But there are other people on this team who do."

"Yeah, way too many," said Daisy, with a tired laugh. "As long as you won't worry about not helping him yourself…" she scooted to the edge of the bed and looked at Simmons. "I will do everything I can to help him," Daisy promised, her eyes straying to the metal surface Jemma was leaning on, the shared wall behind which lay Fitz's quarters. "…to keep him from seeing himself as a monster." Her voice softened as a wave of melancholy overtook her. "I owe him that much." Pushing it aside, she smiled at Simmons. "Do you think he's still up?"

After a brief look of puzzlement, Simmons smiled back at her with understanding in her eyes, no doubt having figured out to what debt she'd been referring. "Oh, Fitz has never been great at sleeping in unfamiliar places. I'm sure he's up trying to figure out what the things in the ceiling are or something."

As she stood, Daisy tilted her head up, surprised. "What the hell are those?"

"Right, you must've still been asleep for that part. We have no idea. Odd though, aren't they?"

"Yeah…" Still studying the dimpled half-spheres spaced throughout the ceiling, "they look like the squishy, little balls we used in like first-grade gym class to learn how to throw, with the little craters to help our tiny hands grip it. But, yunno, cut in half and made of metal." Walking toward the door, she muttered loudly to herself, "Imagine the damage if we'd thrown _those_ at those second-grade twerps."

She smiled to herself when she heard Simmons' soft chuckle at her childhood antics. Daisy opened the door to the bathroom before turning around to face Simmons again. Leaning on the doorframe, she studied her friend. "You know I'll always be there for you too, right? If you need someone to talk to?"

Daisy was glad to see Simmons smile at her at her and nod. "I know, Daisy. Just go talk to Fitz, he needs you more than I do right now."

Daisy nodded, heading across the sparse bathroom to the door to Fitz's room, her bare feet chilled by the tile of the floor. She knocked softly. "Fitz, it's Daisy." She waited.

* * *

"Come in," Fitz called, continuing to look at the pictures he'd taken on his phone.

"What are you looking at?" Daisy asked, sitting down across from him at his small table.

"Pictures of those," he said, motioning toward the ceiling. "After the, er, _thing_ with the window…" His face screwed up as he looked at his phone, "Well, for all we know, anything in this place could be linked to life support, or airlocks, or something else that would have consequences if I destroyed it."

 _Best figure out what things do first,_ before _messing with them_.

"Hey," she said, extending a hand on the table and resting it in his view to get his attention. "Look at me." He did, reluctantly. "You okay?" He put down the phone.

"Yeah," he sighed, with a smile that he couldn't quite make reach his eyes. He ran a hand through his hair, "Just… tired, I guess."

"Somehow, I think it's more than just that…" Her eyes seemed to search his.

"Look, I don't know what you're going through with having had a whole other life inside the Framework, but I've had times where I felt toxic; like I destroyed everything around me, and there have been times that I felt like a monster." She put her hand over his on the table, "Talking—having someone _listen_ —especially someone who can understand: it _helps_."

Even _he_ could tell his smile was brittle. He wished he could believe her, but Fitz knew what he'd done, and that was bad enough. If the others knew… He shook his head. They might look at him and see what he saw in the mirror.

"The things you did when you were under Hive's sway, they're nothing like what I did. Daisy, I killed people." The agonized expressions of the Inhuman subjects of his experiments flashed before his eyes. A pale blue set of eyes, in particular, kept repeating; face twisting in pain, but the eyes had never left his own, never wavered. They stared him down even now. He closed his eyes against the onslaught, but it was no use. "I don't deserve your help. Not with this."

Daisy stood, walking around the table to Fitz's side. With her foot, she turned his chair to face her. "You do deserve—"

"Daisy, I killed Lincoln in there." He refused to meet her eyes. "Tortured him, really. Trying to figure out how his power worked, how he avoided getting electrocuted, how to harness it all for Ophelia's little 'project.'" Fitz hung his head, unable to face her. He pressed his eyes shut, gritting his teeth before he continued. "I performed needless, agonizing experiments on him, for days, and he never once stopped _glaring_ at me, _blaming_ me with his eyes. But it didn't even faze me," he heard the anguish in his voice and, even now, heard his father's voice in his head, scolding him for it. "And when my experiments proved fatal, I just ordered some assistant cart his body off to the incinerator without a second thought."

 _There. That should make her stop._

She paused.

She crouched down to catch his eyes and took his hand.

"You _do_ deserve my help, Fitz. You always will." She said it with such finality.

"I wasn't only talking about Hive when I said I've felt some of what you're feeling. After Hive, I felt toxic. Like I was some black hole of pain and anger and misery that would engulf everything around me, and destroy it all. But after Terrigenesis? _That's_ when I felt like a monster. And you were there for me in ways I can't even begin to pay back.

"We could debate all day on whether anyone in the framework was real, apart from Mace and Agnes—and hell, the case could be made that Agnes wasn't anymore—"

"Mace was, though," Fitz interrupted, "He was a good man; a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. And then I went and dropped a _building_ on him."

Daisy stood up from her crouched position with a sigh. "And I splintered a tree through Agent Calderón: he was a good man …probably, and a part of S.H.I.E.L.D. And then I went and blasted a broken shard of _tree_ into his chest." She shook out her feet for a second before sitting down cross-legged on the floor in front of him.

"Look, let's save the debate on whether or not you could be truly in control of your actions in a…" She made a face as she searched for the words to describe it, "whacked-out, digital alternate-universe that got hacked by an evil robot—" he was about to correct her when she rolled her eyes, " _a_ _ndroid_ , whatever—for another time. But whether or not you believe you are deserving of help in general: what you did for _me,_ Fitz, in _this_ life, outweighs anything you could possibly do in another. You will _always_ deserve my help."

A small, hesitant smile spread across her face. "I know a lot has happened since I went through the mist, but do you remember what it was like at first?" Daisy's eyes searched his. "Everyone was so disturbed by what had happened to Trip, so scared of the change in Raina's DNA—and I could only be with other people from the other side of glass or a hazmat suit.

"I was so terrified when you said I might have caused the earthquake, the stuff around me _exploded_. And it scared you; I could see it on your face. But from that moment on, everything you did was to protect me.

"You made sure no one else would find out, you got rid of the others, and you came into my quarantine room so I wouldn't be alone when you told me that I _had_ changed; but with everyone so scared, we should keep it between us," Daisy's voice welled with emotion, "to keep me _safe_ while we figured things out."

She sniffed and got control of her voice before continuing with more force. " _That_ is who you are, Fitz. You are the only person I know who would hold an out of control force of nature in his arms and say there was nothing wrong with her—who would tell her she's just different now, and that there was nothing wrong with that.

"Even if you think you don't deserve the world's help, Fitz, you will _always_ deserve mine. And I'm not gonna give up on you."

Fitz finally broke down. Dropping off of his chair, he huddled into Daisy's willing embrace. They stayed there for a while; sniffling into each other's shoulders as he finally let his tears fall.

Daisy sniffed. "If you're not ready to talk to Simmons, I'll listen; if you need time on your own, I'll kick everyone out. If you need someone who understands what it's like to have a whole other evil life in their head… I'll get May." A laugh bubbled up through her unsteady voice. "You'd be surprised; she's pretty good at this stuff."

He tried to imagine that. It didn't work. Seeing his expression, she added, "She's not really _comforting_ , she just… says things you need to hear. _And_ she was an agent of Hydra in there, so she'll have some understanding of your role, as well as getting the whole fake-but-not-totally memories of being evil thing."

He paused as they stood up, realizing that if they were going to be talking about the not-quite-fake but not-quite-real events that transpired in the framework often, they might benefit from a shorter way to describe it.

"Quasi-"

Daisy looked at him blankly, 'WTF' practically written on her face.

Realizing it was a complete non-sequitur, he continued, "It means 'seemingly, or apparently, but not really.' For the not-quite-fake, not-quite-real things that happened in the Framework: quasi-real. Should be a bit less time-consuming."

Daisy nodded. "Definitely less time-consuming. And I know it's hard to talk to people about this kind of stuff. I mean… I _left_ pretty soon after what happened with Hive and Lincoln; the whole team being there with constant support… it can be a lot. No matter how sincerely they tell you it's not your fault, if _you_ can't believe it yet, it can just make it worse. So, while I one hundred percent believe that talking to the others will help you, especially May, and Simmons when you're ready; if you want to keep things just between us, that's fine." She tilted her chin up as she looked at him, a grin crinkling her eyes, as she said calmly, "I'll be _your_ Fitz, and keep you safe while you figure it out." He smiled a little at how much she seemed to like the idea of helping him the way he'd done for her. "It might take some time, but once there's some distance betw—" She pulled a face.

"What's wrong?" He asked, thinking that she'd felt a twinge of pain.

She gave a slight huff. "Just..." She rolled her eyes. "Time and distance was the speech Coulson gave me after Hive."

That was an odd reaction; she must not have taken getting that advice very well.

"Was he right?"

She thought about it for a long moment. "Mostly, I guess." The corner of her mouth went up, "Though for me, I think it may have taken time, distance, and a vengeance demon," she shot him a self-effacing smile as she turned to leave.

"Hey, Daisy," he called after her. His brow knit together as he searched for the right thing to say. After a slight hesitation, all he managed was, "Thanks." She smiled at him.

For now, he didn't seem able to put the thoughts in his head in order well enough to elaborate on that. But, for the moment at least, she had brought his mind back to the actual things that they'd been through, instead of the quasi-false memories of the life he'd led in the Framework.  
And he _couldn't_ call the Framework memories false. While they did _take place_ in an artificial reality, the memories he had of that world were still as real in his head as his memory of this one. Didn't that make them real—to him, at least?

 _Losh._ Having two lives in his head was gonna be bloody _rough_.

"Well, it's not entirely selfless," she said with a playful look and a self-deprecating smile. "I need you and Simmons back together. If you haven't noticed, my romantic life is crap. I live vicariously through you." He smiled as she left, silently glad she was able to joke about her luck in that department. It really was terrible.

When he finally fell asleep that night, he dreamt of blue daisies, breakfast nooks, and that time he saw Jemma carrying Aida's head in a box.

And of monkeys in tiny spacesuits.

* * *

 **-Losh was not a typo; it's a Scottish-ism. From the way I've heard it used, it seems the same as saying 'gosh,' but I could be wrong. I just really like the idea that Fitz sounds more Scottish inside his head.  
** **-While technically Calderón's fate is unknown, a few days after the accident they said he was still in critical condition and then they never mentioned him again, so I'm assuming dead.**

 **So. Hope it didn't get too sappy (the rough draft was practically dripping in sap).**

 **First, let me say I adore the Skimmons friendship—did that ever get renamed? cuz I'm partial to Daimons (daimon is just another spelling of daemon, the sort of quasi-deity/quasi-human benevolent nature spirit thing in Greek mythology, and in computer programming is… apparently also a thing.)—But I had to re-watch a few mid season two episodes to get the details right for these chapters, and the Daisy-Fitz (Ditz, heh) friendship is like my ultimate friendship-OTP now. Seriously, the moment when Fitz tells her she's changed was just unbelievably beautifully done. I hope my reversal did it a small amount of justice.**

 **Loved episodes 5 and six so much (omg, the Fitzsimmons feels), but I am going to be deviating from the canon about Robin and her mom. Much as I love that the show followed through on the whole going-through-the-mist-too-young-can-mess-up-your-mind thing from Bahrain, I've been planning their small appearance in this story since long before the show went and added to their characters in the canon. Anyway, Robin will be remaining entirely human.**

 **Thanks so much for reading—the number of views just hit over a thousand! (I have no idea if that's big by fanfic standards, but it's big for me!)**


	5. Day One: In the AM

**Firstly, I'm revisiting the amount of time it'll take for Robbie to show up. It should be in the next few chapters, but I have no idea. Trying to fit too much in just leads to a month-long break before uploading a chapter that I divide into smaller ones anyway. I just can't edit when it gets too long—Honestly, how do people edit things that are 20+ pages? There is _so_ much scrolling.**

 **Second, I'm gonna be uploading corrections to previous chapters, so I'm sorry if that sends alerts to followers of the story (Thanks so much for the follows and favorites!)**

 **If you're ever wondering why it's taking longer than usual the next chapter, I may have updates posted on my author page with explanations.**

 **It's a lighter (if longer) chapter this time. I'm finally getting past a good portion of the set up and into the dorm hijinks! I modeled the setting on a friend's dorm room, and since none of these characters had anything like a normal college experience, I thought it would be fun to give them some of that. #collegeproblems ahead.**

 **2/20/18**

 **~5500 words**  
 **I own nothing.**

* * *

 **Chapter 5: Day One: In the AM**

When Daisy's eyes first opened to see the metal ceiling above her, for a moment, she thought she was back living in her van. She bolted upright and saw the view from the window. _Right,_ she sighed, flopping back down on the bed. _Not in L.A. anymore, Toto._

She fumbled blindly around the blankets, searching for her phone. She checked it out of habit, managing, through bleary eyes, to read the large print in the center of the screen— 9:43 A.M.

Or at least it was in the last time zone they'd been in. Daisy shut off the screen, closing her eyes. Without real, sunrise-to-sunset days, the passage of time would probably just come down to the numbers on her phone.

 _Fun._ She could already feel the walls pressing in on her.

Yawning, Daisy forced her reluctant eyes open to look for Simmons, but the room was empty. She sat up slowly, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, but as soon as her bare feet hit the floor, she drew them back with an involuntary hiss. The metal floor was _freezing!_

Looking around for something to keep the chilled surface from touching her skin, Daisy's eyes fell on the pile of clothes she'd worn yesterday. There was nothing in the room but furniture, she'd already searched it the night before. With an internal groan, she reluctantly put on the socks she'd worn yesterday, but the chill seemed undaunted by this added protection, seeping through them so easily that the socks might as well have been tissue paper.

Realizing she would have to look in Fitz's room anyway, Daisy got fully dressed in yesterday's clothes and put on her shoes. _There had better be other clothes on this boat._ It might be _weeks_ before they found a way off this floating hunk of metal, each person having only one set of clothes would be a disaster. A gross, _pungent_ disaster.

After a brief false start where she almost opened the door to the hallway by mistake, Daisy drowsily stumbled to the bathroom. She knocked on Fitz's door with no response. Peering inside, she found it empty. Both Fitz and Simmons were gone.

Daisy closed the door, rubbing the sleep from her eyes to inspect the small bathroom. It was so strange that they were in Space when so much looked familiar. The shower looked not unlike the individual-stall showers at the gym on the base. She drew the curtain aside to find dispensers of soap and shampoo and conditioner attached to the wall.

With no roommates around, now _would_ be the best time to wash up.

Locking both bathroom doors, Daisy undressed, grateful to step into a hot shower after being too exhausted the night before. The last twenty-some hours had been _rough,_ even by S.H.I.E.L.D. standards. She could almost _feel_ the grime sloughing off her when the soap hit her skin.

As the water rushed against her face, she began to feel marginally more awake. She groaned, remembering her dirty clothes lying on the floor. They were all she had to wear once she was clean. Daisy pulled aside the shower curtain to grab them; she would rather walk around in a towel than put them back on the way they were.

When they were soaked, she balled up them up, got a dollop of soap in her hands and quaked them, just a little. Just enough to get soap and water dispersed throughout the cloth. If she wasn't going to be able to use her powers on anything significant, at least she could still do small things like this to keep the bees from buzzing too loud. While her abilities _did_ injure her when used too much, they could also get pretty uncomfortable when she didn't use them enough.

Not that _that_ had been much of a problem lately.

Daisy hung her washed clothes on the curtain rod and started washing her hair. When her fingers worked out the last of the suds, she stayed, her face turned into the barrage of warm water, and let the past few days sink in.

So much had happened after escaping the Framework: finding out she'd framed her for Mace's death, Robbie coming back, getting blamed for shooting Talbot and stabbed in the arm by a freaking LMD— _Ooh, crap._ She'd forgotten to keep the bandage dry—trying desperately to save Mack and Yo-Yo, Robbie leaving again…

Oh, god. _Gabe!_

Robbie hadn't even gotten time to see his little brother between all the ass-kicking. He had called Gabe to say he was all right, of course, but he'd had to leave again so soon. And she'd promised to look after Gabe in his absence—why did she agree to that? She had 100% thought she'd get arrested _—_ and then gotten beamed up to a spaceship like two hours later.

At least she knew Gabe had people to look after him, but still. He'd worry. After Robbie had taken Eli and the demon core and disappeared through that hell mouth, she and Gabe had kept in touch as much as they could with her job. She'd called to tell him she would be out of touch when she was going into the Framework. She let him know when she came out of it, and when Robbie showed up in Dover. Sometimes she called just to chat, and, on the rare occasion that she had the time for a longer call, he'd even been teaching her Spanish. Well, trying to. Now she would just disappear off the face of the planet.— _Literally_ ; though Gabe wouldn't know it. He would probably think she was in Guantanamo Bay.

 _Robbie'd better get back from wherever he was soon._

It had been fun, fighting alongside Robbie with both of them using their powers. Before their fight with the LMDs, the only other times they'd _both_ fought with powers, they had been fighting each other.

It had also been… _interesting_ , working alongside him in the Zephyr with neither of them using their powers. Once Robbie had given– temporarily relinquished?– the Ghost Rider to Coulson, he stayed with her, assisting her however he could as she tried to save her friends.

And he'd been different.

It couldn't have been more than an hour that he was absent the Rider, but the way he _looked_ at her—Daisy took a shallow breath—it _changed_ , in that time. She'd begun to wonder if he could see the pulse in her neck, he was studying her so closely.

At the very beginning, they had both been so pained and angry that they went near each other only to fight. But as she and Robbie started working together, they developed a sort of camaraderie. Sure, some of the times he'd been nearest were when he was trying to

seem threatening. But they'd also spent a lot of time in that car together; they'd fought together; he'd come in close to check on her arms. All in stark contrast to how he'd been since S.H.I.E.L.D came into the picture.

Ever since Coulson brought Daisy back to S.H.I.E.L.D, and dragged Robbie along with her, he seemed to make a concerted effort to position himself as far away from her as possible.

But in that small amount of time when that thing inside him was gone...

When he talked about what it was like in the dimension where the Ghost Rider had control, he came close to her for the first time in a long time, with a more open expression on his face than she'd ever seen on him. For the first time since she'd known him, he'd seemed truly vulnerable. Like he needed someone to understand just a little of the burden he carried, maybe help him bear even a little of the weight.

When she'd agreed that him being there—with _her_ —was a good thing, the moment was so _raw_ that… Well, there was a reason they'd both looked away, scrabbled for some other, less dangerous, topic. They both knew they weren't prepared for whatever the hell _that_ was.

But as she worked on the Framework code, he sat right next to her – their knees decidedly _not_ brushing under the table – as she tried to extend Mack and Yo-Yo's time in that world. He'd held the radio up, ready to ask for an update or hold it up for her to use, his finger on the button, so that she wouldn't need to look away from the screen for even a moment. She never had to worry about wasting even a second she could be spending trying to save her friends.

Daisy realized now, as she breathed in the cleansing steam of the shower, how much of a gift that was. If Mack and Yo-Yo hadn't made it; if they hadn't gotten out before the Framework collapsed... She would have had no logical reason to blame herself. She had spent every last second trying to help them.

Given what he'd guessed from Lincoln's picture in her wallet, Robbie would have known how important it was that she not lose anyone else like that.

She let the water rinse away the tears she felt forming in her eyes.

* * *

Daisy turned the knob on the wall, shutting the water off. Moving the curtain aside, she froze.

 _Craaaaaaaaaaaap._

In her haste to get all the grime and blood and dirt off herself, she'd neglected to check for a towel. There were none. Not in the bathroom, and she knew none were in the bedrooms—apart from furniture and the bedclothes, they were empty. And because she'd wanted to get the grime from her clothes, she now had nothing to dry herself with or _wear_ , and no way to ask Simmons for help because their phones were ridiculously far out of range.

Daisy opened the door to her bedroom a crack. No one had come into the room while she showered. She bolted in, quickly wrapping herself in the blanket on her bed. Perhaps not the most dignified way for the team to find her, but at least it was something. At that thought, she tied the blanket around herself like a dress and went back into the bathroom. She started just _barely_ quaking her clothes, even less than she'd used to wash them, in the hope that the motion and the heat created by it would dry them. The team would come in at some point, and she didn't need them seeing her… well, 'ladies things,' as Fitz would say, hanging from the hook on the bathroom door.

As she was finishing up drying her things, she heard the creak of the door on Fitz's side opening. Not sure if it was one of the team or some stranger from the ship, she froze.

"Daisy?" She released the panicked breath she'd been holding. It was Yo-Yo.

She lowered her un-stabbed arm to her side (it would take a while for raised fists to become her first reaction for defense again, no matter how bad using her powers might be). She felt her heart rate slow, checking that her makeshift dress still covered everything before she opened the bathroom door for her friend. "Yo-Yo? What are y—" Before she could finish, the young woman handed her a bundle of cloth.

"Thought you could use these. And I was right," Yo-Yo said in her accented English as she took in the sight of the blanket-dress. "Sorry I didn't knock; everyone is together outside, and I thought it would look strange if I knocked on an empty room."

Yo-Yo took a step backward into Fitz's room, letting a grateful Daisy close the door of the bathroom to change. Speaking through the door, Yo-Yo said, "A few changes of clothes, slippers, a toothbrush, things like that. We just finished the tour."

Daisy looked through the clothes, finding a tank top and sweatpants she could put on for now. It seemed most of the clothing was pretty basic: tank tops, T-shirts, sweatpants, stuff like that. There were also toiletries and a towel. As she pulled the shirt over her head, Yo-Yo continued, "I managed to sneak extras of the supplies without getting seen, so I thought I'd bring them to you while the others are making breakfast."

The older woman waved away Daisy's thanks, so she continued, "Wait, breakfast? It's got to be what, like 10:40 by now, shouldn't—well, maybe not everyone, but shouldn't _May_ at least have been up for hours?"

"10:34," Yo-Yo corrected. "Not sure; I slept late. But Coulson got us all up an hour ago. One of the people here knocked on his door saying we should take a tour of the ship, get our supplies and learn how things here work. Simmons tried to wake you to say she was leaving, but you were _profundamente dormido_."

Having finished dressing, Daisy opened the door for Yo-Yo, then snatched her new clothes and her now-dry old ones to bring into her room. Looking over her shoulder, she asked, "What are we having for breakfast?" She paused as her gaze fell on the open window. "What kind of food do they even _have_?" Daisy didn't even want to imagine the weird things they might have to eat on a spaceship.

Yo-Yo followed Daisy into the room she and Simmons now shared. "Hopefully more than just gross, sci-fi protein packs," she grinned, "Those sound terrible. But I came here as soon as the tour ended so I don't know. All I learned about the kitchen is that each group has a set cooking time so the kitchen won't get crowded. Ours is late. Besides," Yo-Yo made a face, "it's not like time means much without any _sol_."

Daisy smiled as she tucked her clothes into the dresser drawers alongside her arm gauntlets. "Well, I'm glad you came when you did. I wasn't exactly stoked at the prospect of having all my clothes drying in here when everyone showed up, and I had no way to ask anyone for help."

Elena pulled a face in sympathy. Looking thoughtful, she said, "We should have someone stay with you. At least until we find a way to communicate."

"Yeah, that would probably be best," Daisy said, dejected. She kept thinking of when Yo-Yo first came in; she hadn't even wanted to call out in case it was someone from the ship."Ugh! I feel so helpless!" She flumped down into a chair.

Yo-Yo just put a hand on her shoulder and sat down next to her, probably unable to find anything to say to make it better.

Yo-Yo sighed. "Yeah, this is gonna suck for you."

 _Spoke too soon_. Daisy laughed.

They spent a few minutes passing the time together, sitting at the small, two-person table and talking about movies, what might be in the locked section of the ship (the tour had apparently glossed over that part, though mostly because no one had ever been able to open the door). Eventually, they couldn't think of any more light-hearted things to discuss.

After a short silence, Yo-Yo murmured, "I wonder if anyone has told Davis's wife or Prince's sisters that they're dead." Daisy sagged in her seat.

"I think Coulson made the phone call after we left Talbot at the base." Daisy sighed. "I just hope no one tries to… interrogate them or something." Her jaw tightened, "After everything that Aida and her Daisy-Bots did to Mace and to Talbot, I wouldn't be surprised if S.H.I.E.L.D gets labeled a terrorist organization again. Prince and Davis… Their families don't deserve that." She put her head in her hands, "God, especially Davis's wife. Their son is turning what, like three months old?"

Yo-Yo released a sharp breath. "Four months," her voice was unsteady as she said it, "next week." She offered a watery smile, "I heard about him a lot, stuck on that plane. As much as he hated the idea, I think Davis was happy we stopped cloaking. It meant he could break radio silence. He got to call home. Anna held the baby up to the phone, and he put it on speaker so we could all hear his baby-sounds." The older woman seemed to be looking right through Daisy, and her eyes teared up. "Davis was so happy to hear the baby, even when it cried."

Daisy felt a lump start to form in her throat. That was so sad. "I wish I had known them better." She looked away, "Davis was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent since way before I started, but I barely knew him. And Prince… He didn't start working at the Playground until after I left. All the time we spent together on the run, and I was unconscious for pretty much all of it." Daisy stared blankly at the table, her voice quieting. "I didn't even know Prince had sisters."

Yo-Yo nodded, looking miserable. "Two _hermanas mayores_. He was the youngest." Yo-Yo paused for a long moment. "I should have waited to go into the Framework. A little later and I could have helped them."

Daisy put a hand on yop of Yo-Yo's on the table. "You can't blame yourself for that. You were busy saving Mack." Her friend just bent her head, closing her eyes. One hand went to her neck, where her necklace used to fall. After a few moments, her shoulders loosened.

A corner of Yo-Yo's mouth quirked upward, and she loosed a soft chuckle. "I don't think we need to worry too much about their families getting treated badly." Daisy looked at her curiously. "If they try anything, Piper will come at them with an anti-tank weapon or something."

The two women smiled at each other at the thought and moved on to lighter topics.

* * *

After a while, there was a knock on the door and Coulson's voice called, "Breakfast!"

"Come in!" Daisy hadn't realized how hungry she was until the prospect of eating was so near. She and Yo-Yo stood up from their chairs.

Coulson came in with the entire team in tow. Everyone was carrying chairs or trays full of food. Fitz and Simmons were smiling, Fitz a little less widely, but smiling all the same. Daisy caught Jemma's eyes with an inquiring look and Simmons nodded to answer the unasked question; they had told the others about the separation. Daisy smiled understandingly, and Simmons ducked to put a small box under the chair she'd just brought in.

Daisy moved to look at the tray of food Fitz had just put on their table, surprised to see it was entirely recognizable. There was toast, cereal, scrambled eggs and more. All in all, it looked like a meal you could get at any breakfast joint in the U.S; Daisy was stunned.

"How…" Daisy didn't even know what to ask first.

"Yeah," Mack said, understanding her confusion. "There's a computer panel where you input the things you want: eggs, milk, bread, whatever; and it just comes out. We only had to cook it. Can't vouch for how it tastes, though," he looked warily at the scrambled eggs, "we haven't tried any of it yet. On the bright side, the dry foods seem more likely… to be… from Earth." He paused, muttering, "Just said _that_ sentence."

Mack shook his head, then forced cheer into his voice. "Anyway, the food machine has your favorite cereal! I know it's still your comfort food even though you pretend it isn't." He lowered the tray he was carrying so she could see the large glass jar full of colorful, dry cereal.

Daisy noticed the judgmental look on Simmons' face as her friend saw the brightly colored cereal. "What? It's a remnant of my van-living, hacker days. Used to eat these by the handful." Daisy eagerly took it off the tray, popping the lid to grab an illustrative handful.

Mack faltered as his eyes fell on the tray atop the small table, and placed his on one of the chairs May had brought. "Knew we forgot something. Alright, back out, everybody. We need to get tables and utensils." The others put their trays on top of the dressers, and everyone but Simmons left again to get the small tables from their rooms or utensils from the kitchen.

Daisy shared a wary look with Jemma. Holding the colorful jar of cereal, she popped a few pieces into her mouth. Her eyes widened. "These are real! How the hell do they have these out here?

"No idea," Simmons said excitedly. "It offers some _fascinating_ possibilities though, doesn't it? Perhaps there's some type of food-generating machine that uses molecular assembly to build food from basic building blocks, like the replicators in Star Trek, or perhaps the entirety of the food here was brought here, as is, from Earth."

"Yes," Daisy replied flatly, "Fascinating." She rolled her eyes good-naturedly at her friend's blatant nerdiness.

Once the others had come back, and all five tables were moved together, everyone sat down, fitting easily around the surprisingly large, makeshift table. They all paused and looked at Coulson as if expecting him to make a speech.

—The scene did remind Daisy a lot of the family dinners featured in the holiday episodes of literally every show on TV, which then aired on repeat for the entire month of December: All the family crowded around a table with food piled down the center, the person at the head of the table usually made some speech about family and togetherness and crap like that.  
Meanwhile, _she_ was watching the show while eating microwaved dinners on the couch of yet another foster home, turning the volume up just so she wouldn't have to hear the neighbors yelling. – _Ooh, that took a weird turn._ Daisy was momentarily taken aback by the odd direction of her train of thought; her time in L.A.'s foster system barely ever crossed her mind—

But all Coulson said was, "Okay, let's eat some space food."

They dug in. Daisy found that all of the food was normal, even the eggs, which she hesitantly tried after Coulson said they were okay. It tasted the same as it would if it was made from groceries bought at a supermarket.

They spent the first half of the meal debating whether they had ever left the Framework, had escaped and then put _back_ in, or had escaped and remained free. Eventually, the group decided on the third option, mostly because it was the least insane, but also because even Fitz and Simmons agreed that just thinking about it made their brains hurt.

They spent the second half planning what to do that day. It was decided that someone would stay with Daisy during the day; for company and in case she needed anything, at least until Fitz found a way for the team to communicate.

May offered to be Daisy's companion in the mornings; they could train together and work on a fitness regimen that could be done inside the would switch out whoever was staying with Daisy at lunchtime, while the rest of the team would eat in the common area to avoid seeming _too_ weird and secretive. Then they would all eat together again for dinner. They also agreed to turn the clocks on their phones backward a few hours based on their meal times in order to keep something resembling a normal day.

The rest of the team would be spending the day learning about the ship and getting the stories of everyone on board. Maybe that would shed some light on how they all got there, and how to go back.

Simmons was, of course, worried about their health. "Given the limited amount of space on this ship, we will all need to spend significant time being active to avoid muscular atrophy; Daisy in particular. A few days won't have a _huge_ effect, but we have to be prepared: it may take some time just to figure out how we _got_ here, never mind how to get back. And even once we figure out how to get home, actually accomplishing it may take longer still. Last time, the portal opened depending on astronomy. Even if this one is different, we cannot depend on getting back anytime soon."

The group was a little less chipper after that realization, but they soldiered on.

When Yo-Yo said she would start working on her alibi for when the Kree come, by subtly working the whole 'aliens freak me out' thing into conversations, May added, "And spread out your time all over the ship; a while in one area, then move on. They'll get used to seeing you everywhere, but never expect to see you anywhere." Yo-Yo nodded, and all the agents with less covert training than Daisy's S.O. filed it away.

After they finished eating, most of the team left (thankfully taking their furniture with them; the room was small enough without any clutter), leaving only May and Simmons behind with Daisy. May got up to do her post-breakfast Tai Chi, and Daisy stood with her.

"Nope," said Simmons, motioning for Daisy to sit back down, "Not until I've checked your wound."

Simmons reached under her chair for the box she'd brought in earlier. "It may not have been a deep cut, but it does still require treatment. Especially with everything you've put your arms through this past year." She took the bandage off Daisy's upper arm. "I noticed you're not wearing your gauntlets. Are your arms feeling better?"

"Yeah, a lot better." Daisy eyed the drawer where she'd left the vibration suppressing gloves. "Between the bone pills, the new gauntlets, and the fact that I kept them on when I went into the Framework, it feels like my arms completely healed." Daisy hissed through her teeth as the alcohol swab met her wound. "Well, minus the area where a robot knifed me."

"The inactivity in the Framework will have helped too." More softly, Simmons continued, "At least _some_ good came of that place."

Daisy grinned. "Well, that and the amount of time we spent getting healed by the stuff from the Zephyr's med bay. I can barely see the marks on my shoulder and my leg. It's too bad we don't have the simu-whatchamacallit here. This stupid cut might actually scar."

"Simulacra. And it would be nice to have it, but this wound is fairly superficial; your penchant for leather kept the knife from going too deep. With _proper_ care," Simmons looked at her chidingly, "it shouldn't scar. Besides, the Simulacra generator on board the Zephyr is a crude version intended for emergency first-aid and to repair deep tissue damage. Normally, it would have left us to do the superficial healing on our own, but you're right: because we were under it for days longer than was necessary for emergency aid, we may just have slight scars from the damage." Having finished cleaning the wound on her arm, Simmons motioned for Daisy to show her the shoulder that had gotten shot.

"You're right," Jemma was taken aback. "It _is_ just mild discoloration. It's remarkable; you would never know that mark was made by a bullet. Give it a few months, and it may actually disappear completely."

"What," said May, more as an expression of surprise than a question, her controlled movements faltering. She turned to Daisy as Simmons got a fresh bandage out of the first-aid kit. "Did you get shot again while I was in the Framework?"

Daisy froze, unsure of how her former supervising officer would react. Hesitantly, she replied, "Yeah. When Aida replaced the others, Coulson and Mack's LMDs got me a few times."

May's eyebrows twitched upward. "A _few_ times?"

"Once each; shoulder and leg." She tried to distract May's concern by turning on Simmons. " _She_ got stabbed in the leg by fake-Fitz though, so…" Daisy gave a half-shrug.

May sank into a chair, looking almost shaken. "How much did I miss?"

Simmons answered. "Quite a bit. Most of it was well worth missing though."

They fell into a heavy silence. Daisy took the awkwardness as an opportunity to pester her S.O. "I think Coulson drank the Haig with the fake you." A small, teasing smile spread across her face. Jemma looked at her like she was crazy; there weren't many people who would dare poke this particular bear.

May's face turned to stone. Quietly seething stone. "I thought as much."

Seeing her –anger? It was so hard to tell with May– Daisy backpedaled. "Don't be too mad. Even _she_ didn't know she was a robot. It was pretty impossible to tell."

She was a little happy to confirm that her impassive S.O. had feelings of _some_ sort for Coulson. That was as far as she was willing to pry, though. May plus Feelings seemed like a potentially volatile combination.

Thankfully Simmons took over. "She was made from a scan of your brain, and her programming didn't kick in unless the Darkhold was involved, so she didn't just look like you, she thought like you." Jemma sighed. "It's why she helped us in the end."

May took a second to respond. "Yeah, you mentioned that I blew up the base."

"Yep," Daisy answered, "Fake-Coulson set you up at the hangar bay doors with a trunk load of explosives and a dead-man switch to keep us from escaping. But you just let us pass."

"…And I still blew it up."

Recognizing the question in May's voice, Daisy explained. "The LMDs were still chasing us. I assume he was trying to get through."

"Hm." May paused for a long having heard enough of her alter ego's behavior, May stood up and went back to doing Tai Chi. She looked at Daisy. "Come on. You should be doing this with me. You may have only spent two weeks in the Framework, but you're still starting this confinement from a disadvantage."

Daisy stood to join her, and Jemma turned to look curiously at May. "I've been meaning to ask, how have _you_ been doing, May? Between the months of inactivity and the cocktail of drugs Aida had you on, you must be experiencing some aftereffects from your time in the Framework. If I didn't know that you've fought since then, I would be concerned about severe muscular atrophy."

May raised a disapproving eyebrow at being questioned about her wellbeing but still answered the young scientist. "Not much difference. Muscles are a bit weaker. Whatever was in the IV Aida used must have kept them from deteriorating too much."

"Damn, wish we'd had some of that stuff." Daisy _was_ at a disadvantage. She could _feel_ it. Even after just ten days in that messed up bizarro-world, she could feel the difference in her balance and the steadiness of her movements.

Simmons looked thoughtful. "It is impressive that you were well enough to fight immediately after spending months completely motionless." She was talking more to herself than the others now. "Being kept upright will have helped. But if it _was_ done chemically, perhaps we could reverse engineer it from your blood samples. Though, the drug cocktail may have been supplemented through other methods."

May's eyes narrowed, picking up on the scientist's wording. "Like what."

Simmons jerked out of her reverie. "Oh." Poor Jemma looked like a deer caught in headlights with nowhere to run. "Well… one way to prevent degeneration would be to... keep the muscles in use."

May barely inclined her head. "How."

Jemma's long pause totally gave away how much May would hate whatever she was about to say.

"Well," she cleared her throat. "...electrical stimulation might work." Daisy's eyebrows flew up. She and Simmons both waited in frozen silence for the older woman's reaction.

May was silent for a long while, then, "The robot electrocuted me."

"It's a–erm–possibility. In any case," Simmons said quickly, "the activity will benefit you both. Especially any cardio you can manage."

Finally given an entry point with which to change the subject, Daisy eagerly asked how she could get cardio done without leaving the room, which led the three women to spend the next hour devising how to train in the small space without any proper equipment or weights. Or _mats_ , which she was beginning to realize was a significant disadvantage.

* * *

 **profundamente dormido: deeply asleep**  
 **sol: sun**  
 **hermanas mayores: older sisters**

 **Again, sorry if the ending is a bit lacking. Dividing the chapter was the only way I could bear editing it.**

 **I was surprised when I found out but Davis's first appearance was in episode 1x09, the character only returned in season 4 (and I assume the 'getting bigger every day' quote was because his wife was supposed to be pregnant). Also, super random, but he's real-life married to the actress who played Skye's mom.**

 **I tried to fix what I consider to be HUGE plot holes in the canon regarding consequences of the Framework. I'm like, legit mad at the writers for never addressing them.**

 **1st is that Daisy got shot twice right before going into the Framework, and on the day they come out there's a banner on the screen that says Ten Days Later. _WTF?!_ So, the Simulacra machine from Avengers 2 is how I'm explaining that (and the general lack of scars in the show– Seriously, Daisy's face gets cut _so much_ ). In my head, SHIELD has a simple version, like the one they used on Clint early on in the movie, at the base, and an even cruder version on the Zephyr for emergencies (because of the likelihood that multiple agents would likely get injured at once).**

 **The 2nd plot hole is muscular atrophy. It's a real issue. There have been studies done where college athletes at the top of their game are made to stay inactive for a while, and muscular degeneration started in a matter of _hours_. I mean, _come on;_ They injured May a few minutes into 5x01. If they wanted Ming Na Wen to be less physically active this season, it could just as easily have been from the very real issue of muscular degeneration, since anyone who was entirely inactive for months actually _would_ struggle with it. I'm hoping that her injury becomes important somehow just to justify the complete lack of Framework repercussions.**


	6. Fun to Freak-out in 44 Minutes or Less

**Sorry that I always have such long authors notes, but none of my friends watch anymore. I need to gush with somebody; it may as well be the internet.**

 **My theory for the 100th episode: #TripLives. I don't have great reasoning on why it would happen; I just _really, really_ want it to, and given AoS's roots with #CoulsonLives, I think it would be fitting.**

 **I'm still QuakeRider all the way (the only way I ship Deke and Daisy is as friends with a dash of annoyed-sibling), but I'm finally starting to like Deke as a character. I didn't really get the point of him until this episode— I mean, it was a good side story to see his character development, but I didn't get why he was so central— but I get it now; _happy_ Deke is freakin' adorable. Him hugging the tree was the cutest thing _ever_.**

 **Even if QuakeRider doesn't happen, though, I'm don't think I could ship them. A part of me would want to; I love whenever they're both on screen (they're so funny together), but he _sold_ her. Not just sold her _out_** , **but sold _her_. No matter how much they've changed, if someone freakin' _sells_ you, you do not date them. _Ever_. Being friends is okay, given that he changed enough to be willing to die for them, but that's it.**

 **And I hope it doesn't seem too random, but I've had a scene in my head ever since Koenig interrogated them about their ideal box on a desert island and Simmons said the TARDIS (one of my all-time favorite AoS moments), of her introducing Daisy to Doctor Who.**

 **3/7/18**

 **~5300 words**

* * *

 **Chapter 6: From Fun to Freak Out in 44 minutes or Less**

Daisy knew Fitz would be too busy to be on Daisy Duty for the afternoon (it was their first day on a spaceship after all, and Fitz was... well, Fitz), so she found herself wondering who would be sent to stay with her.

She beamed in welcome when Mack came through the door, happily taking the delicious sandwich he offered. Having been apart for most of the past year, they had a lot to catch up on, but they spent lunch talking mostly about the Framework—his adorable daughter in it in particular. Much to Daisy's relief, Mack was clear that he wasn't mad at her for trying to trick him into leaving that life behind.

It was strange for them both, talking about someone they had both liked and cared for, knowing she'd been a fiction; her bubbly laugh and caring heart mere lines of code.

Mack's experience in the Framework had been different from the others'. He'd had a pretty normal life there, one centered around a piece of reality just slightly altered. When he'd woken up, he remembered that life clearly, same as the others, but the important things –and his emotional connections to them– had mixed with his actual past. Having felt her loss in real life first, and again in the Framework, Mack had a serene acceptance of his grief.

His loss wasn't raw, but the kind of loss one has lived with for a long time. Mack was just glad he'd been able to see some version of her grow up, fictional or not, and be there when she'd needed him. For him, his time in the Framework was like a clear memory of a perfect dream.

Eventually, the conversation turned toward the ship. Having noticed that neither of the meals they'd had contained any meat, Daisy asked about it. Mack—surprised it had slipped their minds to mention it at breakfast—told her that meat seemed to be the only thing their magic food machine _couldn't_ produce.

"I bet Simmons got excited about that," Daisy said with a grin. "If the Kree really do come by spaceship to refill our food stores, they'd have a much longer journey to get here than we did getting beamed up. Between spoilage and freezer burn– _Ugh!_ " The grossest thought had just occurred to her. Mack raised his eyebrows. "If we _did_ have it, and they _didn't_ bring this stuff from Earth, it would be _alien_ meat!"

Mack put down what was left of his sandwich, looking queasy. "I was _just_ wishing this was a burger."

Vegetarianism was suddenly much more appealing for them both.

They talked about the people on board, caught up on some of what they'd missed when Daisy left S.H.I.E.L.D, even speculated about what was going on with May and Coulson (both were convinced Coulson had been considering finally making a move when they'd realized May had been replaced).

But as the hours ticked by, they ran out of things to talk about, falling into companionable silence as they figured out how much stuff on their phones still worked without the internet.

Thankfully, it was a decent amount.

Daisy felt absolutely awful about it, but a small part of her was glad someone from the team had gone through this before. Simmons' experience had not only led Fitz to trick out their phones with even _longer_ -lasting batteries and a seemingly unlimited amount of storage, but the prospect of getting trapped on an alien planet had also led everyone on the team use it. All of them had downloaded _loads_ of material onto their phones.

Beyond the obvious survival manuals and how-to videos (S.H.I.E.L.D. training covered a lot, but multiple sources couldn't hurt), Daisy had downloaded pretty much anything she thought might entertain her in the case of an (extended) emergency. She'd even written a program that scoured the web for things she might find interesting or useful and downloaded automatically: news articles about her, about 'Inhuman situation,' or S.H.I.E.L.D. _After_ scanning for malware, of course.

But she could already tell it wouldn't last forever. Eventually, she would run out of old news, beat the last level of the games, finish the books, get bored of the music, and get bored of the videos. It was one thing when she had the constantly changing content of the Internet, but she could only watch the same clip of a baby panda sneezing so many times before it lost its effect —Granted, she had a ton more views left in her before that happened, but still. She needed stuff to actually _do_ ; her phone's clock was already set hours ahead because of the times she'd wanted new lives in Candy Crush.

 _God, she missed the internet._ She really needed the distraction.

But the boredom was just icing on top of a cake of anxiety. The worst part of her situation was being unable to help her team. Daisy _had_ gotten used to leading the charge, and to being there protecting her friends—she couldn't stand the thought of something happening to them while she was stuck in this room. Daisy had lost far too many people in her life, but none haunted her like the ones she might have saved.

With the recent frailty of her bones, Daisy had felt utterly powerless; something she'd once thought she would never feel again. Her arms were fully healed now, but she was still incapable of protecting _any_ of the people she cared about; _useless_.

* * *

When the team returned for dinner, Daisy learned over delicious plates of pasta (seriously, Coulson could _cook_ ), that the first day passed without incident, the team quickly fitting in with the others trapped with them. The first thing they'd investigated was the area where the crew said the Kree (or whatever they were) supposedly took the supplies they brought with them. Unfortunately, the door through which the possibly-Kree took the probably-supplies was, at all other times, a solid metal wall.

There was little else in terms of discovery because all other accessible rooms were living quarters or common rooms (for laundry and such). The only place that showed any promise was a storage room full of junk.

Fitz frustratedly pierced penne on his fork, glowering at the pasta. "There's no _bridge_ on this bloody ship! And no controls for _anything_ in any of the rooms we've accessed. Forget steering, we can't even control the bloody temperature!"

That shocked Daisy even more than the door that only materialized for aliens. "How can there not be _steering_? Aren't we—" Daisy thought about it, "Wait. _Are_ we moving?"

"Well, 'Moving' is complicated, but as far as _traveling_ , there's no way to tell at the moment," Simmons answered. "There's nothing near enough for us to register a change in position. But even if we did see an asteroid floating by the window tomorrow, it might only be the asteroid that's moving."

"Wait," Yo-Yo paused with a forkful of penne halfway to her mouth. "What if we need to move out of the way of the asteroid?" Everyone turned to Simmons and Fitz who avoided eye contact. Yo-Yo muttered something in Spanish. "You don't know, do you?"

"No clue whatsoever."  
"Haven't the foggiest."

Huh.

Well, _that_ sucked.

"On the upside," Jemma explained, "Space is a lot more empty than you might think. There's loads of stuff in it, of course, but it's all _very_ spread out. The chances of something actually _hitting_ us are quite slim."

Apart from the room of random junk, the only places there might be information on how to get home were the two unexplored areas on the ship. And with seemingly no way of getting through the non-door until the Kree arrived, their only option was to try to open the locked one; with the noises coming from it.

But for that, they would need to prepare. For all they knew, the area might have been sealed because of a gaping hole in the side of the ship, or it had gotten overrun by tribble-like creatures. With no way to know what was on the other side, they'd need to either find or _make_ gear to deal with anything from aliens to open space. But even if they found spacesuits in the room of junk, they weren't on the ship alone. If they were going to risk letting unknown lifeforms in, or letting oxygen out, they would need the agreement of the crew.

As dinner came to a close, Coulson pulled Daisy aside. "I know you must be going nuts in here, but hopefully these can help with the boredom." He pulled a deck of cards from his jacket pocket. "There's a rotating system for the few games onboard, but the cards always stay with whichever group is newest. Let me know if you run out of games you know how to play; Mack and I spent so long on the Zephyr, I think we learned every card game there is."

Daisy smiled, thanking Coulson for the cards. He and Mack had probably learned it all because of the time they'd spent chasing her.

* * *

Jemma left Fitz in the kitchen to help with the dishes while she went to stay with Daisy. Opening the heavy metal door to their room, she found her friend at the far end of the room, sitting at the table which now sat in front of the window between their beds.

Daisy turned to look at her. "Go Fish?" Daisy held up a deck of cards, wagging it back and forth.

Jemma nodded, sitting down in the remaining chair. The inactivity must be driving Daisy mad after years with the constant craziness of S.H.I.E.L.D. Sometimes, it seemed like they never got the chance to relax but having no choice in the matter would likely destroy the charm.

"Fitz will likely be gone a while; there are still a lot more dishes to wash."

Daisy smiled, finding the best in the situation. "At least that's one benefit to being cooped up: no KP duty. Well, at least until they realize that there's a sink in here too."

Jemma grinned. As Daisy started dealing the cards, she said, "I'm hoping I can bribe people into letting us borrow more things for you to do."

Daisy looked up at her, her expression dubious. "With what? We didn't bring anything with us."

"We kept what we had on us." Simmons picked up her cards, not bothering to keep the smugness out of her smile; "Phone charger."

"Damn," Daisy's eyebrows went up, looking impressed. "I'm sure people would kill for that."

She grinned. "Let's hope they just trade for it." Simmons looked at her cards, "Any Fours?"

"Go fish. Can you even plug it in?"

She drew a card from the deck. "There are a few outlets scattered around. I'm hoping to come to some sort of arrangement where people lend us whatever they use to pass the time in exchange for the charger so they can look at pictures and such on their phones. There should be any number of takers."

Daisy paused while Jemma took her pair of sixes. "Is that what you did on Maveth? Look at pictures of Fitz and the rest of us?"

"Yes," she said after a pause, "Quite often." It seemed odd to her that Daisy didn't know, but Jemma realized that with Terrigen spreading and the ATCU abducting people, she had talked more with Bobbi about Maveth than Daisy.

Her friend was pensive. "I guess that must take a bit to sink in." A small, self-deprecating chuckle left her chest. "I mostly thought the charger would be useful to play games. I mean, it's not like we could call anyone. Though almost everyone I'd miss is here anyway."

Jemma looked up at her, feeling mischievous. " _Almost_ everyone?" Maybe Fitz was right and something _had_ happened between their friend and Robbie Reyes.

"Well, I did promise my dad I'd visit." Jemma deflated, looking back at her cards. "And I have, a couple times." Daisy's face scrunched up in frustration and sadness. "But it was hard to find a reason to be hanging around a veterinary clinic without any pets." Jemma had forgotten that the new mind S.H.I.E.L.D. had given Cal Johnson had come with a life as a veterinarian.

"And I'll miss Gabe."

 _Ooh,_ that _was promising_. "We kept in touch when Robbie disappeared. With Robbie gone, he was in danger of losing the house, so I made sure he'd be able to keep it. Last time we spoke, he actually said he was thinking of getting a pet," a smile twinkled Daisy's eyes, "so we could take it to my dad's clinic next time I was able to visit."

Jemma's heart swelled. That really was an amazing thing the younger Reyes had offered her friend. She was sorry she'd never had the chance to meet him.

"And his brother?" Simmons asked innocently, keeping her eyes on her cards in the hope that Daisy wouldn't notice her interest.

Daisy paused. "He should be back soon. I'm sure Gabe will be ecstatic to see him again." Glancing up, Jemma wondered if Daisy answered that way on purpose, but she let it drop. Daisy's face had shifted, a line forming between her brows as she looked away. "The last time they saw each other… well, Gabe found out about the night job." She sighed. "It didn't go well."

Jemma could imagine. "That would be a hard thing to learn about your brother."

Daisy nodded. "And he barely had time to process the information before he had to actually see it happen; in all its flesh-burning-off, murderous-rage-filled glory." That _would_ be awful.

Not having been there, Simmons was endlessly curious about something she'd heard from Fitz. "Is _that_ when he broke out of the containment module?" When Daisy nodded, she couldn't suppress the excitement in her voice. "I cannot _believe_ that happened! I wish I could have seen it," Daisy pulled a face, and she quickly went on, "It's awful that _Gabe_ saw it, of course. It's just, well, that material kept in the _Hulk!_ And that was an _earlier_ version." Her friend just shrugged, so Jemma turned back to her cards wondering what on earth had given the older Reyes brother his powers.

"Any Eights?" Jemma asked. Daisy was clearly still stuck on concern for Gabe, and Simmons tried to picture the scene; what it would be like to see his brother burn to the bone, to watch him angrily fight his way out. Jemma hadn't seen much of Robbie Reyes. Between being based at the Playground and Mace's side mission for Senator Nadeer, she'd missed most of the team's interactions with him, in ''demon'' form or otherwise. But she _had_ seen Coulson transform into that thing and, odd as it was to watch, she had been told what it looked like, and she'd been expecting it. To watch his big brother's face burn away to the bone, to see him beating Mace... She sighed. "It's one thing to hear someone you love is a killer, it's another to see it in person."

Daisy's eyes flicked up to look at her. _Damn._ Jemma winced as she realized what she'd said. "I _honestly_ wasn't talking about Fitz."

Daisy lifted her eyebrows slightly but let it go, passing her two cards.

They played in relative silence for a minute or so before Daisy finally spoke. "No one would blame you, you know; if you were. I mean, forget Agnes, the Fitz in the Framework tried to kill _you_."

Jemma shrugged. "It wasn't really him," she said simply. She couldn't be sure if that bit just hadn't hit her yet, but she _did_ know that the man who'd done that was not _her_ Fitz. He was no more responsible for what he did in the Framework than Daisy was for what she did under Hive's sway. "Besides, there are _far_ more concerning things than what happened in a digital world where his mind had been hacked."

"Yeah..." Daisy said carefully, "How _are_ you doing with being out here again? If it were me, I'm sure I'd be a mess."

"Better than I thought, actually." Jemma really did believe that. She'd had some struggles re-acclimating herself to life on Earth—post-traumatic stress only one of them. She'd come a long way from where she started, and those few post-traumatic habits of which she hadn't managed to rid herself would actually be of use now.

"It's not _good_ to be back, of course. But a part of me never quite stopped worrying it would happen again. Now that it has..." Jemma paused, smiling self-consciously. Hesitating, she opened her mouth to speak a few times before it all poured out. "I was starting to think I'd gone a bit mad," she said in a rush. Daisy looked at her with raised eyebrows and a slight smile as Jemma looked upward in relief, feeling a burden rising off her as she finally said it out loud.

"At first when I got back, I actually carried quite a bit around with me— _literally_ 'carried,'" Daisy put her cards down as Jemma started listing the items in her old survival kit. "I had a small knife, salt packets, high caloric nutrition bars, a phone charger, some copper wire and a piece of zinc to power it, iodine tablets, a first aid kit; I even had Fitz make me a sort of Swiss Army knife on steroids." Jemma caught the confusion through the concern on Daisy's face and paused.

Daisy winced in apology, "Sorry, it's just– Zinc and copper wire?"

"It's how a lemon can be made into a battery, though the method can be used with other power sources." Daisy looked impressed. "Anyway, I slowly eased out of carrying the other things, but couldn't quite stop with others."

"Ah," Realization dawned on Daisy's face. "The phone charger."

Jemma nodded. "The charger, the zinc, and the copper. I stopped carrying everything else _well_ before you left S.H.I.E.L.D, but I forgot to put the charger in my pocket one morning and spent the entire day on edge—and _that_ was less than a month ago." She groaned,"I felt bloody barmy." Jemma paused and took a calming breath. "But now that this happened, I know better."

She had a vindicated grin. "The _panic_ may have been from PTSD, but the _fear_ was not irrational. I _wasn't_ crazy for thinking it could happen again; our _lives_ are what's insane."

Daisy laughed at that, agreeing wholeheartedly. As they went back to their forgotten game, the pair started doing what had become a sort of tradition between them in their rare downtime: listing the crazy events they'd been through, and laughing over how insane it sounded out of context.

' _Vengeance demon.' I mean, honestly_ …

* * *

After years of Simmons trying, with nothing better to do (and nowhere to run), Daisy finally agreed to watch Doctor Who. They lined pillows along where the edge of her bed met the wall and settled in to watch it on Jemma's phone – she'd apparently downloaded every episode of the new series, along with a bunch from its original run.

They started with episode two of the reboot—Simmons seemed to think Daisy would refuse to watch it ever again if she saw episode one first, making a comment (which Daisy elected to ignore) that she could be a bit of a snob when it came to computer graphics, and that the ones in the pilot were... not great.

A few minutes in, Daisy froze, staring at the screen. She stayed perfectly still so as not to startle her friend, trying desperately not to laugh as Jemma—who didn't even seem to know she was doing it—absent-mindedly hummed along to the theme song. Then a knock on the bathroom door startled them both.

Fitz had gotten back from the kitchen.

With a quick glance to Jemma, Daisy invited him to watch, and Fitz sat down next to her on the makeshift couch. Snugly between her two friends, Daisy clocked Jemma's wistful smile as she took over holding the phone. They had only had a few movie nights like this since they'd stopped living on the Bus. Between the fallout from Fitz's brain damage, Simmons disappearing through the monolith, and Daisy leaving S.H.I.E.L.D, they'd only managed it once or twice.

Unfortunately, the sweetness of the moment was undercut by the programming. While the show seemed entertaining enough, it was not, perhaps, the best way to end one's first day in space. At least that episode wasn't.

The first few minutes were fun. Watching amused as a parade of different aliens showed up on screen, Daisy couldn't keep herself from wondering aloud what an alien cow would look like. Noticing the confused looked on her friends' faces, she added, "Just something I was thinking about earlier." Fitz laughed, asking correctly if Mack had been talking about wanting a burger, but Simmons took the question seriously.

"The Asgardians, Kree, and Chitauri are built more or less like humans, but other species could and likely do look very different, both from us and anything else on Earth. Some alien biology could potentially be entirely different from life as we know it. Or very similar." Her mouth twitched a smile, "There could even be a place where Fitz's dream of Dwarf-Chameleon sized monkeys exists."

Fitz smiled, a dreamy look in his eyes. "Can you imagine? _Monkeys_ the size of your fingernail…"

Daisy grinned. "Or bugs the size of a gorilla." She snorted in laughter at the look on Fitz's face as he got pulled out of his reverie.

Then, halfway through the episode, problems with the ship came to the forefront of the plot and all three of them tensed. Not long after, Simmons quickly reached over and hit the power button on her phone.

"I am _so_ sorry," Jemma said as she took the phone back. She looked a bit shell-shocked but managed to keep some cheer in her voice, "That episode had a," she cleared her throat, " _very_ different interpretation before today." Her faded into an awkward silence.

For a moment, all three were silent as they considered their helplessness, stranded in the middle of literally nowhere, knowing they had no control over any of it.

Daisy's eyes strayed to the window. They were _all_ powerless out here.

"We're… _screwed_." Daisy looked out at the vast nothingness, littered with stars that were unfathomably far away. "I mean, we have zero control over _anything_ inside the ship, _and_ no way to move it, but none of that matters anyway because we have no idea where we are."

Fitz looked lost, defeated. "Even if there _is_ some kind of steering mechanism, either in the locked section of the ship or behind the door that forms for the Kree, we might be _lightyears_ from home. The commute could last longer than our lives."

Simmons looked between them. With the sympathetic grimace of someone delivering bad news, she said, "Unfortunately, that helplessness you're feeling will come in waves."

Daisy watched Jemma suddenly regain all her usual composure, pulling herself out of her own worst fears for their sake. "The most important thing is to not give up hope. We got here somehow; we _can_ get back. And not just by going the _long_ way around."

Jemma took a breath. "Even if there's no way to get this ship to Earth, we could always get back the same way we got here." Simmons faltered briefly but recovered her assurance as she continued, "There may not be anyone working from the other side this time, but we live in a world where you can travel from one side of the universe to another in an instant. We can–"

"Robbie." Fitz perked up.

Daisy and Jemma both looked at him confused. "The man opens portals to other dimensions; outer space can't be harder than that."

"But how would he even find us?" Jemma asked.

"Oh, yeah." Fitz deflated but quickly recovered. "If him going 'round killing people while lit up like a roman candle taught us anything, it's that our system for detecting the enhanced is in massive need of an overhaul. We knew _some_ would slip through unnoticed, but now? God knows how many Unregistered Gifted are out there. He can't be the only portal jumper, and I bet there are people who track things."

"You're not wrong." Daisy _had_ been shocked to learn a possessed, flame-headed serial murderer had been working in L.A. without drawing S.H.I.E.L.D.'s notice. "There could be _loads_ more Enhanced people than we know about. And there are loads of people looking for Quake, killer of Mace. Imagine if the NSA found a powered tracker; I'm guessing they would use enhanced assets, Accords be damned. Honestly, who's to say there _aren't_ people working on this from the other side?"

Their panic over their powerlessness suitably mollified, the trio looked for a new distraction. "What else you got on that thing?" Daisy asked, looking at Jemma's phone. "Nothing with spaceships though. I need a palate cleanser for my brain."

The three of them eventually decided on Fringe. Laughing over Daisy's childhood crush on Joshua Jackson, and at ease for the first time in far too long, she, Fitz and Simmons finally had their movie night. When it came to the LMDs, they'd finally found something to laugh about; cracking up as they named them in the style of Fauxlivia and Walternate: _Fritz,_ _Fauxlson, Fakenzie…_

* * *

Meanwhile, in L.A

Robbie's shoe landed on an actual floor for the first time in two days.

He breathed the smoke from his lungs, eyes roving around the room. _His_ room. In the house he and Gabe had once shared with Tío. The room was just how he'd left it, months ago, the day he ran into S.H.I.E.L.D. in the prison parking lot. Well, give or take a layer of dust.

Looking at a picture on the wall of him, Gabe and Tío at a soccer match years ago, it was strange to think that the last time he set foot in this room, he'd had no idea the kind of man his uncle truly was. He'd still believed the man who raised him was a good person.

Robbie didn't bother with nostalgia after that. He stepped over a pile of long-forgotten laundry and opened the door to the hall, wondering if his brother was home.

But as soon as he saw the hallway, Robbie realized he should just be hoping Gabe still lived there at all.

There were children's toys littering the edges of the hall; the room across from his—Gabe's until the accident had necessitated a move to Uncle Eli's now-vacant larger one—had a name he didn't know stuck on in glitter-covered foam letters. Unless something huge had happened in his little brother's life—but the toys on the floor were for a child of four or five. His time in that darkened dimension may have _felt_ like an eternity, but no; he hadn't been gone _that_ long.

He stepped gingerly down the hallway, hoping against hope that his brother hadn't been evicted without Robbie's income to pay the rent. He'd been so angry when he'd taken Tío and the nuclear box-thing with the ironic name down with him to that place, his only thoughts of Gabe had been of getting their uncle away from him. The desperation for vengeance had drowned out anything beyond that; he hadn't even considered how Gabe would get by when all he did for pay was help balance Canelo's books.

His increasing heart rate calmed as he stepped into the living room. It wasn't the same as it had been when he disappeared but it was clear that Gabe still lived there. The sofa was the same as it had always been, the gap for his chair still there, though the table in front of it—once a piece of crap held steady by the quarters wedged under one of its legs—had been replaced with one much nicer. But it was the pictures on the wall that held Robbie transfixed.

Many of the framed photographs were just as he remembered, but not all of them. While the group photos of him, Gabe and their tío remained, the pictures of Tío by himself were gone, replaced by ones of an older woman and her young daughter. There were a few photos with a man Robbie also didn't know; a wedding photo, one of the man and the (now very pregnant) woman laughing, one of the couple with their baby daughter.

Robbie stared at the picture hanging where the photo of Uncle Eli's high school graduation had once been; its space now occupied by a large picture of Gabe, a four-ish-year-old girl sitting on his lap. His brother was resting his chin on the little girl's head, grinning and caught mid eye-roll as the beaming girl raised her arms above her head to tug his ears outward. Robbie couldn't help but smile at Gabe's annoyed-but-caught-up-in-the-cuteness, perfect big-brother expression.

At the same time, it felt bittersweet. Robbie had missed so much the last seven months. He'd called his brother immediately after he'd followed the no-longer-robot chick through the hole she ripped in that dimension, but they'd both just talked about how sorry they were for everything that happened the last time they saw each other. He didn't even know the girl's name or how she and her mother had come to live at their house.

Turning away, he saw a newspaper on the table opened to a story about a local animal shelter. Robbie noticed the date listed at the top, double checking with the crossed out days on the wall calendar: _Thursday._ His eyes went to the clock.

Just enough time to get to Garfield High before Gabe got out of class.

* * *

 **Robbie! I had to bring him earlier than I'd planned. It messes up my timeline a bit, but the longer I was going without writing him, the less interested I was in writing the story. Since the space stuff has become more and more about just setting up the plot the next plot point, I've been losing my muses. Hopefully, this will bring them back.**

 **I'm probably gonna post a one-shot soon of a deleted scene from this, so check it out if you want. It seemed too out of place in the context of this story, but remember when Sam(?) Koenig mentioned Quake fanfiction? Well, in it, she finds some. And I may make the cover image the floor plan, cuz I'm not great at describing settings.**

 **I wish I could write Mack better and actually show his scene instead of narrating it, but in writing dialogue, I try to work it until I can hear the actor's voice saying it in my head (though Simmons keeps blurring with Tahani from The Good Place). So far this season, Mack has been used mostly for little quips and one-liners, (which is a travesty because he's awesome. I'm hoping it will change with what's going on with Yo-Yo, also that there are more Daisy/Mack hugs. He's so huge that she looks like a child, and it's the sweetest thing ever), and when I write longer conversations, I just can't make him sound right in my head.**

 **The Doctor Who scene played out differently than I'd pictured. In my head, Simmons always started with episode 2, but as I re-watched it, I realized there's a lot there that parallels their anxieties over their own situation.**

 **Update: ON HIATUS**


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